


we were victims of the night

by TheSushiMonster



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 07:55:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2380697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSushiMonster/pseuds/TheSushiMonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She wants to say it sucks a lot less because at least there’s someone - and that someone is Trip." After everything, Trip and Skye end up spending a bit of time with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were victims of the night

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place pre-2x01, but contains spoilers. Shout out to Cory, Alissa, and Juliana for the usual.

She pulls his arm, guiding him towards the center of the room. The crowd swims, stifling air sinking into his bones - but her skin on his is cool, and even when she steps closer, he can still breathe.

“Hartley is on the other side of the room,” says Trip, easily twisting her hand around hers as he guides them across the floor. The music is deep but smooth, the golden tiles glittering under bright fluorescent lights that clash loudly against the crystallized decorations scattered in the ballroom. Skye nods to her left, and Trip raises an eyebrow. “Hunter isn’t supposed to be the middle man.”

“And since when does Hunter do what he’s supposed to do?” She twists to her right and the strap of her dress slips slightly. Trip fixes it as she frowns. “Do we know who he’s meeting?”

His hand drops back to her waist. Her hair smells of lavender. “No,” says Trip, squinting against the bright lights. Hidden in the shadows, May nods to him. “May’s got it though.”

Skye dips her head and Trip winces when her heel crushes his toe. “Sorry, sorry,” she says quickly, half-smile and half-frown. Without waiting, she pulls him closer to the middle of the room.

“Why - “

“Just shut up and dance with me.”

Trip rolls his eyes and spins her.

* * *

 

She finds him sitting on a table and staring at nothing. Except, she knows it isn’t nothing and it’s not quite darkness that surrounds them, but a dull fire dressed as a shadow. Her hand rests on his stiff arms and he relaxes, noticeably.

“I miss them,” he says, eyes dark and blank. Skye is lost, but not as lost as him, in that moment. “I know - I’m lucky, I’m fortunate.” He takes another swig of the bottle in his hand and Skye bites her lip. “I really fucking miss them.”

“I’m sorry,” she says and even as she does she grimaces. “I mean - I don’t understand, not really, but - I guess it’s my fault, in a way. I erased it - everything.”

“No,” says Trip, eyes still on his fingers, long and dry, and Skye resists the urge to hold them tightly. “You did what you had to do. It’s what needed to be done. I just - miss them.”

She still doesn’t understand, not really, but then again - she misses Fitz beating her in chess, she misses Simmons sneaking into her room to take saliva samples, she misses when Ward wasn’t locked in the basement of their very stationary base. Skye runs a thumb along her wrist, watching Trip close his eyes and stiffen again.

To the rhythm of the silence, Skye lifts herself onto the table, swinging her legs in the warm air.

* * *

 

Trip is the one who wants to visit first. And when he returns, quiet eyes and thin lips, Skye shrugs. “Didn’t want to see you?”

Trip shakes his head but doesn’t bring it up again. (It’s only later Skye realizes she probably doesn’t want to know what Trip saw down there.)

* * *

 

“Sore?”

Skye groans, ice on her shoulder, the leather couch more uncomfortable than should be normal. “May is brutal.”

“But worth it.” Trip sits on the coffee table across from her, two bottles of water in his hand.

Skye groans again. When he hands her an opened bottle, she gingerly sits up. “You’d think this would get easier.”

Their fingers brush and Trip raises an eyebrow. “Do you think any of this will get easier?” Skye sighs and shakes her head as she takes a sip. Her eyes flutter close, but she can feel his eyes still on her. “My SO always told me it’s about channeling emotion - not just using it.”

She watches his gaze never waver - he’s firm and solid and he knows exactly what he’s saying and Skye hates that. So as she takes another sip, she meets his stare. “That’s what May says too.”

Trip blinks and grins. “Always right, Agent May.”

“It gets annoying.”

Trip laughs; the water tastes sweeter.

* * *

 

“A robot.”

“No.”

“C’mon - there’s _no_ way they can both give the _exact same_ greeting - “

“There’s no way SHIELD has specific protocols ingrained into all their secret base employees heads?”

“But he keeps bringing up more - “

“Trip.”

“Fine, if they’re not robots, then what are they?”

“ _Twins._ ”

“That’s boring. Definitely robots.”

* * *

 

When Trip finds her, she’s staring blankly at the flickering lines on the screen. The eerie green glow highlights the bags under her eyes. She looks sad and beautiful, and Trip knows when he sees her fingers twitching in her lap that his presence is probably welcome.

“What are we looking at?”

Skye glances at him, but doesn’t seem too unnerved. Her hands grip the table holo-table tighter, and she squeezes herself together, but she doesn’t move away when he leans next to her. “Something Coulson gave me,” she says, clipped voice and hard edges.

Trip doesn’t ask. “She left you a note.” he says instead, giving her the neatly folded envelope. The cursive _Skye_ is elegant and pretty, nothing less than expected, but Skye hesitates before taking it. “I can leave - “

“Did she only leave me one or - “

“May is talking to Fitz.”

Skye looks at her hands, at the paper, and Trip wonders what it’s like to know that some things are not in your control. But then Skye rips open the letter and scans it and Trip watches her face flicker between anger, amusement, pride, guilt, sadness, and acceptance.

“She would,” says Skye, the tease of a smile on the corner of her lips, the glow of the monitors sinking into her skin. “She said to say she’ll miss you too, by the way,” she adds, and this smile is more teasing than sad, more sparkle than glow.

Trip faces the screen, watching the trickle of numbers and lines. “Of course she does.”

The moments pass in silence, just lines and breathes and the heavy weight of absence in the space between them.

“She once said she couldn’t imagine life without you,” says Trip when the quiet is too much because something in his heart hurts and even without looking, he knows Skye feels it too. “That even if you hadn’t been friends for long - “

“It’s like we’d been together all of our lives,” says Skye. She looks over and Trip meets her gaze. He’s struck by the reflection - the sad eyes, the quiet smile, the cautious fear of hoping. Skye smiles wider, brighter, and Trip has never believed more in anything else. “It goes for you too.”

“What?”

“You belong to us now,” says Skye, swinging her legs off the table and smoothing down her shirt. “You’re ours. Our Trip.”

It’s hard to swallow, but Trip manages to anyway.

* * *

 

“I get it now,” says Skye. She’s probably drunk, since Trip looks like a Greek God in the moonlight - or maybe she’s sober and Trip is normally this attractive. “The betrayal thing.”

“Only now?” Trip is definitely drunk, the light-weight, after his two beers. The wet grass frames his body, but it’s the interlocked fingers over his chest that give him away. Trip is still, steady, ready - now he twitches, anxious, and maybe Skye isn’t helping. “Didn’t register after all the deaths or SHIELD falling apart or - “

“No, I mean,” says Skye, sitting up now and scooting closer to him. The night is cold, the breeze light, and his arm accidentally hits her before resting on her knee. “I mean - I get it. That it happens. That people leave and some people stay. I wish more people stayed.”

“Hey,” he says and Trip tries to get up and fails so Skye bites her lip to not laugh. “I stayed! That should count for something.”

Skye leans into her knees, into his hand. “It counts for a lot.”

* * *

 

“ _My anaconda don’t -_ “

“Skye.”

“ _My anaconda don’t -_ “

“ _Skye -_ “

“ _My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun -_ “

Skye cuts off on the last phrase, the wind knocked out of her. Trip catches her with an arm around her back, and Skye grimaces at his smug face. “Pay attention.”

The loud bass swims in her blood and Skye stands up. “I’m getting pumped up.”

Trip shakes his head, backing up on the mat. His kick to her shin aches just a bit, but the calm, amused face strikes her a little bit harder. “You of all people know you don’t get time to get pumped up,” he says and Skye sighs.

_He keep telling me to chill, he keep telling me it's real, that he love my sex appeal -_

Skye fixes her stance. “Don’t lie, you love this song.”

“My intense admiration and undying appreciation of this particular song is well-known, but is also not the point - “

Shaking her head, Skye rushes at Trip.

* * *

 

They both watch Fitz. They both bite their tongue, nails digging into palms, as Fitz vibrates and mutters under his breath, hands gripping nothing tightly. May whispers something, hand on his shoulder, and Fitz shakes his head but relaxes his fists.

“He’s getting worse,” says Skye. She can’t stop staring, at the differences and the shaky outline. She leans towards Trip, away from the light. “Maybe we need - “

“To be there for Fitz,” he says, watching her. But Skye can’t stop looking at Fitz - at his furrowed eyebrows, at his wriggling fingers, at his hand digging scars onto his hip. Trip nudges her away from the door. “C’mon, we’re not helping.”

Skye sinks into the first chair they find and Trip joins her. It’s weird, Trip sitting beside her since he usually sits across, but she doesn’t mind. Not when Fitz’s frown and shaking head are burned into her head. “This sucks.”

“Yeah,” says Trip and Skye looks up at him. He’s watching the trickle of people swimming in and out of the room, most unfamiliar and all in black. “It does suck.”

Skye wants to say it sucks a bit less with Trip - with someone who isn’t Coulson (unsteady and busy), or May (tough and busy), or Fitz (unsteady and gone), or Simmons (gone and tough), or _him_ (gone, unsteady, tough, busy, and definitely not an option.) She wants to say it sucks a lot less because at least there’s _someone_ \- and that someone is Trip.

Instead she curls her knees into her chest and watches Trip watch the room.

* * *

 

“You’re holding back.”

Skye frowns. “I don’t know what - “

“It’ll work out,” say Trip, adjusting his grip on her hand. They spin around once more, the music picking up speed. May remains quiet in his ear. “Simmons will come home, Fitz will figure it out, Coulson will make it work, and May - May will relax.”

“And how do you know this?” says Skye, and even if she doesn’t sound skeptical, he knows she is. It’s been too long now, and the days are tired and heavy. But her feet glide across the floor next to his. “I know you’re Mr. Everything, but - “

Trip laughs. “You gotta hope, girl. Hope.”

And while Skye opens her mouth to say something - probably about how she has _plenty_ of faith, thank you very much, and he’s the one who needs to keep the optimism, she’s perfectly fine, please - instead she stops and exhales. He can feel her breath on his chest and her lips spread into fire, marked by the reflections of artificial diamonds. “I’ll hope and you have some faith, okay?” Her hand on his shoulder squeezes in time with his stomach. “You’re ours, remember?”

“Looks like working out with May is teaching you more than just how to fight,” says Trip, unable to keep the pride out of his voice. “Picking up that ‘always right’ trick, huh?”

Skye laughs and the shadows across her face retreat for the moment - there’s still a buzz in his ear and a corner of smoke at the edge of his sight and and deep ache in the back of his ribs. But Skye laughs, Trip laughs with her, and the music softens.

 


End file.
